Big West schedule is big issue for SDSU

San Diego State doesn’t join the Big West Conference in men’s basketball for more than a year. But the first big game is already underway.

At issue is the length of schedule when they leave the Mountain West for the Big West in 2013. When the conference’s basketball coaches met in Irvine earlier this month, SDSU’s Steve Fisher pushed a 14-game schedule for the 10-team league; instead the coaches voted for an 18-game schedule – “pretty overwhelmingly,” according to Big West commissioner Dennis Farrell – in which everyone plays everyone else, home and away.

That recommendation must be approved by the 40-person Big West Council of presidents, administrators and athletic directors that meets in two weeks, then ratified by the conference’s Board of Directors.

Fisher and Athletic Director Jim Sterk declined comment, saying they wanted to respect the process. But last December, when SDSU announced it was moving to the Big West in nearly every sport except football, both spoke of a reduced league schedule in men’s basketball as one of the deal points.

Farrell said at the time that a 14-game schedule was not “written” into the contract with SDSU but amounted to a “verbal understanding.”

The problem for SDSU: It is leaving a league ranked fifth nationally over the past two seasons for one ranked 24th (out of 32), according to Collegerpi.com. That figures to significantly dent its RPI, the computerized ranking system for all 340-odd Division I teams that reputedly influences NCAA Tournament selection and seeding. The fewer games against teams with poor RPIs – and the Big West had five at 250 or worse last season – the better.

A 14-game league schedule also would leave SDSU with 16 or 17 nonconference games to best take advantage of its newfound ability to get games against high-profile schools (Syracuse and UCLA are on next season’s schedule) while not having to play a murderer’s row of opponents with a limited number of available dates.

“It would give us latitude and flexibility,” is how Fisher put it in December.

It also would provide, Fisher said, “wiggle room” to land an at-large berth in the NCAA Tournament should the Aztecs not win the Big West tournament. More than half the nation’s conferences play fewer than 18-game schedules. SDSU played 14 in the Mountain West last season.

“I do know that is a very important issue for San Diego State,” Farrell said. “I’m certainly sensitive to that. And I’m sure when it gets to the administrative level that there will be a lot of sensitivity to that as well.”

The Big West coaches may have expressed sensitivity, too. They just didn’t vote that way.

Their concern: A shorter league schedule forces schools with limited budgets to find more nonconference games instead of taking another bus trip across Southern California, where all but two Big West teams are located. And it would rob two teams per year the chance to play burgeoning national power SDSU at home.